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When hundreds of Taylor Swift followers noticed their Vienna live performance plans dashed final month on account of safety threats, town’s artwork establishments got here to the rescue. Providing free entry to Swift ticket holders, museums throughout town actually opened their doorways as a cultural refuge. This system was a serious success, with the Albertina particularly welcoming greater than 20,000 followers over three days. Because the Swifties returned house, many left with an perception the artwork world is just starting to acknowledge: Vienna is greater than only a vacation spot to revisit the outdated masters.
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A part of the modernization inside the artwork scene comes from town’s regular development. Vienna recorded its second-best yr ever for tourism in 2023, recording 17.3 million in a single day stays, and a 3rd of Vienna’s inhabitants doesn’t maintain an Austrian passport. Its 1.8 million residents symbolize greater than 180 nationalities, a 12 p.c enhance since 2007. And the rising artwork scene displays this diversification. By 2025, Vienna will host 15 artwork gala’s, starting from the Reasonably priced Artwork Honest—that includes works priced beneath €7,500—to the high-end Artwork on the Park occasion on the Park Hyatt Resort. The document variety of gala’s alerts a wholesome urge for food for discovery within the Austrian capital.
Collectors like Valeria Napoleone, whose focus is on selling girls artists, are taking be aware. “The gallery scene is robust, with completely different generations of gallerists and really surprising packages. [It’s] definitely nice for brand spanking new discoveries,” she informed ARTnews. “I’m notably excited at a number of unimaginable individuals changing into a part of the Viennese up to date artwork scene, up to now few months alone. What’s to not love about all this?”
Vienna’s rising stature within the up to date artwork world shouldn’t be misplaced on Francesca Gavin, the London-born author and curator who was named inventive director of the viennacontemporary artwork truthful final October. The truthful is about to have a good time its landmark tenth version this weekend on the Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Heart. Gavin is not any stranger to viennacontemporary, having final yr curated its ZONE1 and VCT ACTIVATION packages, which characteristic Austria-based artists beneath 40 and a particular art-tech collaboration, respectively. Each packages obtained essential acclaim, and positioned Gavin as a visionary pressure in Vienna’s artwork neighborhood.
If she has any nerves about taking up from former inventive director Boris Ondreička, an artist and curator who has proven work on the Venice Biennale and over half a dozen different biennials, Gavin isn’t letting on.
“Earlier than I got here to Vienna, I didn’t understand how culturally engaged and the way attention-grabbing the work popping out of town was,” Gavin informed ARTnews. “I feel collectors will come as a result of the work is nice. It’s about individuals realizing how culturally engaged and robust the youthful era of labor popping out of [the city] is.”
This yr’s version of viennacontemporary coincides with two different artwork occasions within the metropolis. The primary is Parallel, a site-specific, installation-focused competition operating September 11–15 on the Otto Wagner Areal. The second is Curated By, during which dozens of Vienna galleries open reveals helmed by worldwide curators simply days after viennacontemporary wraps up. The timing isn’t a coincidence.
“Any longer, we’re ensuring we coincide with Curated By as a result of that’s such an unimaginable undertaking,” she stated. “That type of collegial relationship is basically vital to construct what a metropolis could be.”
Whereas Gavin might have began as a tradition journalist for publications like British way of life journal Dazed after which Time Out, her CV has since crammed up with arts accomplishments: 10 books on visible tradition, a place as founding curator of Soho Home’s 3,000-work assortment, a cocuratorship of Manifesta 11 in Zurich, and curation of quite a lot of worldwide exhibitions. She continues to host a month-to-month artwork historical past radio present and serves as editor-in-chief of the annual tradition journal EPOCH REVIEW. Its latest subject options Barbara Kruger, Grace Wales Bonner, Marc Goehring, and Thundercat.
For the organizers of viennacontemporary, Gavin’s busy plate was an asset, not a hindrance. “As they put it, something that helps to proceed establishing me as a voice with a robust community inside the artwork world is nice for the truthful,” Gavin stated of her persevering with to edit EPOCH REVIEW.
Gavin shouldn’t be new to Austria’s artwork scene, having moved to Vienna in 2020 and rapidly forging connections with artists, gallerists, and collectors. When discussing town, her eyes gentle up. It’s clear Gavin loves it. “Vienna is an area the place you possibly can experiment and uncover, and I feel that’s actually priceless. I really like the thought of an artwork truthful being the guts of a second [and] for individuals to style that,” she stated. For Gavin, it’s each this new interconnection and outdated historical past that presents a complete bundle. “At some gala’s, individuals go for the artwork and don’t essentially need to go to town. Folks need to come to Vienna as a spot. That’s a possibility. It’s an unimaginable metropolis with a very wealthy artwork heritage. That’s the place we profit.”
Massive modifications are in retailer for the truthful, which was relocated to Messe Wien’s Halle D, tripling its house and encompassing excessive ceilings, pure gentle, and a extra handy location. (The truthful was beforehand held at Kursalon Music Corridor, a grandiose however cramped Nineteenth-century Renaissance constructing.) This yr’s version will host 98 galleries and 6 institutional stands from 24 nations, a serious bounce from final yr’s 61 galleries from 19 nations. Galleries debuting there this yr embody Kvalitář Gallery in Prague, Gallery RIMA in Belgrade, and a handful of Italian areas like Giorgio Persano in Turin, RizzutoGallery in Palermo, and Pinksummer in Genoa.
“I’m actually pleased with the gallery listing’s growth,” Gavin stated. “Particularly, all the nice galleries in Austria, but in addition some actually good ones from overseas, starting from Ashes/Ashes in New York to Zero… and eastcontemporary in Milan and Dawid Radziszewski in Warsaw. We’ve obtained some good new additions that haven’t proven on the truthful earlier than.”
The truthful shouldn’t be brief on programming, with quite a few prizes and particular sections. The Collectors Prize, introduced in collaboration with the Vienna Collectors Membership and VORmagazin, will award €1,000 to 1 rising artist within the ZONE1 part. In the meantime, the Queer Artwork Prize has two classes: the Group Prize awards one queer artist a grand prize of €1,000 and two runners-up with €500 every, whereas the Gallery Prize rewards galleries that promote queer artwork of their truthful sales space. One particular part on the truthful is CONTEXT, curated by artwork adviser Pernilla Holmes, and that includes 9 “largely female-focused and Jap European-focused” solo shows of artists from the late twentieth century; a second particular part is ZONE1, curated this yr by Bruno Mokross, whose Unbiased Area Index connects the multiplicity of undertaking areas round Vienna. Lastly, Salzburger Kunstverein director Mirela Baciak has taken the reins of the VCT STATEMENT to current “The Colour of Vitality,” an exhibition that unites artwork and politics by way of the lens of local weather; it options works by Sophie Jung, Shubigi Rao, and Liv Bugge, amongst others. The present will debut at viennacontemporary and seem per week later at Salzburger Kulturverein.
Viennacontemporary opens, after all, amid wider shifts within the artwork market. The Armory Present opened final week in New York noticeably missing a lot of the vitality of earlier editions, and whereas Frieze Seoul fared higher, few works there offered for greater than $500,000. Not precisely a triumphant opening to the all-important fall season.
“I’ve been saying I ought to have a T-shirt made saying NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL ECONOMICS,” Gavin stated, with fun. “This can be a robust yr. Battle, inflation, and lots of instability round galleries. It’s a troublesome yr to develop a good, but by some means, we’ve managed it.”
The truthful occupies an more and more crowded discipline of small and medium gala’s in Europe, leaving apart Frieze London and Artwork Basel Paris, which open subsequent month. Copenhagen’s CHART artwork truthful held its twelfth version on the finish of August, and Artissima in Turin and Artwork Cologne open in November.
For Clemens and Saskia Leopold, twin collectors whose grandfather Rudolf based the Leopold Museum, viennacontemporary stands out among the many crowd due to its overlap with a packed schedule of artwork occasions. “The timing ensures [that an] worldwide viewers of not solely collectors but in addition of younger and established artists and curators [are] in Vienna,” they informed ARTnews. “Compared to larger artwork gala’s, viennacontemporary is an important [space] for its internationally oriented galleries to have interaction with Viennese collectors and facilitate extra intimate encounters with the gallerists.”
Whereas it’s too early to find out viennacontemporary’s success, Gavin is hoping the truthful will exhibit the vibrancy of Vienna’s up to date artwork neighborhood, not simply town’s wealth of artwork historical past.
“I purpose to indicate that should you put money into and develop the up to date artwork world as an trade—and the companies related to that—that additionally creates a wider cultural consciousness all through your entire metropolis,” Gavin stated. “It helps recenter how individuals view a spot. We all know that tradition brings individuals, brings funds, brings vitality. It’s actually attention-grabbing to give attention to how to try this.”